4. Leon: The Professional
Leon, The Professional, is an incredible film in how it combines bleak realities with the grace of a child. But that grace, really, is only surface-level in the characters, Leon, a sharp-nosed, gritty assassin, and Matilda, a young girl whose troubled family gets shot up over the father's dealings with drugs. After this apartment shoot-up, similar to Pulp Fiction in its construction of normal set-designs as more frightening than scenes of street-chasing violence, Matilda moves in with Leon. He lives in the apartment down the hall, and after helping her escape as the last victim in her family, she wants to be just like him: a hit-man. If you find a little girl playing around with a silencer disturbing, this isn't the movie for you. It's a coming of age story beyond the norm; there aren't any high-school boys or even moments where Matilda is overly-pensive. She acts like a woman, and wants to be treated like one, especially by Leon. It also stars Gary Oldman in an intense role as a corrupt cop, Stansfield.